It was a ‘Good Day’ in arts-lovin’ Pomona

Six days after downtown Claremont got the “Good Day L.A.” treatment, complete with a bakery stop, record store promo and sidewalk hootenanny by the Folk Music Center, the Fox morning show visited downtown Pomona to focus on what host Steve Edwards called “a resurgence in its arts and cultural scene.”

I’ve been on this story for 15 years, but word has now reached Los Angeles. Fox reporter Olga Ospina visited the dA Center for the Arts, marking its 30th anniversary (the resurgence has evidently been building slowly), where five children from the Boys and Girls Club danced in Aztec costumes.

Ospina was more articulate than the reporter on the Claremont story but equally impressed.

“Tell me about Pomona, because I think most people don’t realize this is such a big arts scene,” Ospina asked Frank Garcia of the Chamber of Commerce.

Less bombastically, Chris Toovey, the dA’s president and founder, said the arts have provided a focus for downtown “and really brought community back to the center of Pomona.”

A second segment showed off the downtown trolley; the School of Arts and Enterprise, a charter school that melds performing and visual arts with academics; and the Hip-Hop School of Arts, whose founder, Julio “Little Cesar” Rivas, boasted: “We’re the first hip-hop school in the world and we’re located here in the city of Pomona.”

Ospina concluded her report by saying, “Pomona, really a big hub for the arts.”

Wasn’t that nice? Good to see Pomona get some positive recognition in the wider world. The segment could only have been better if the crew had left the dA and found those folk musicians from Claremont out on the sidewalk, still performing.

La Verne Leader

• Regarding the city’s $1.3 million purchase of a 100-foot ladder truck for firefighters, subject of a joking comparison here to Upland’s controversial fire engine, Mayor Don Kendrick says La Verne has more tall buildings than you’d think. The city has four complexes of three stories, Hutton Apartments on the old Person Ford site and the university’s Wilson Library, Brandt Residence Hall and Abraham Campus Center, and one complex of four stories, the Vista La Verne student apartments downtown. If there’s ever a towering inferno, La Verne is prepared.

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• Speaking of tall structures, two cranes at the Metropolitan Water District plant can be seen from blocks away. The $150 million construction, due to continue through 2016, will convert water treatment from chlorine to ozone. The F.E. Weymouth plant, the district’s oldest, was built in 1940 in the Mission Revival style and is considered an architectural landmark. The plant treats and delivers up to 520 million gallons per day for Los Angeles and Orange counties.

• It took months of planning and a painful six-week closure to accomplish, but the popular restaurant Taste of Asia (2007 Foothill Blvd.) has doubled in size, taking over the vacant space next door. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve seen the mayor there too.

Valley Vignettes

• A financial dispute between San Bernardino Associated Governments, known as SanBAG, and Metrolink may mean an end to the 11 p.m. weekday train from Los Angeles to San Bernardino. SanBAG is refusing to join other county transportation agencies in approving an 8.8 percent boost in its contribution to Metrolink, instead offering 3 percent, which may mean cuts in service. Metrolink will hold a hearing at 8:30 a.m. Friday at SanBAG headquarters, 1170 W. Third St. in San Bernardino.

• A feature in the June issue of Westways on good dining spots for travelers included Glendora’s Donut Man. Besides the expected praise for the seasonal strawberry and peach doughnuts, writer Miles Clements says the apple fritter is “a thing to behold” and his personal favorite. (I love it too: It has the heft of a hamburger.) “The Donut Man is the best reason imaginable to be cruising down Route 66 in the middle of the night,” Clements writes. “Good thing, then, that Jim Nakano’s Glendora shop is open 24 hours.”

Culture Corner

A veritable menagerie of animal-themed movies will screen on Thursdays at Ontario’s Ovitt Family Community Library this month, and what a zany lineup it is: the 1938 screwball classic “Bringing Up Baby” with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (Baby is a leopard) on July 10, Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion animated “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” on July 17 and the 2011 family film “Red Dog” from Australia on July 24. All movies begin at 6:30 p.m. at the library, 215 E. C St., and admission is free.

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On my blog last week: Two classic Watergate studies were on my reading docket in June; I catch a show by my favorite band; and a reader compiles favorite phrases from my Restaurant of the Week posts. Make insidesocal.com/davidallen one of your favorites.

On my Facebook page, meanwhile, we had a cute discussion of words that we’ve mispronounced after first encountering them on the page. Among the contributions: “awry,” “supply,” “quinoa” and “epitome.” Feel free to chime in, or just to like my page, at Facebook.com/davidallencolumnist.